Have you seen the parks that are barricaded (quite badly) in the city?
If you haven’t heard - Rozelle Park was immediately shut down in January because a kid took home some mulch that contained asbestos. This led to a bigger investigation where it turns out more parks and a few schools have been found with Asbestos in the mulch.Â
The City of Sydney has been updating this page every few days on which parks were tested and which ones contain Asbestos. They have since mentioned that testing is done and clean up is underway.
Before we get into it, based on the high level information above, who do we think is to blame? Click on the poll to vote for your answer.Â
Who’s to blame?Â
The governmentÂ
The Environment Protection Authority
The contractor who installed the mulch
The contractor’s supplier of mulch
The above options all have a say in the handling of asbestos. The contractor’s auditor or tester who provided the certification, the mulch supplier, the contractor hired by the government, the EPA who keeps track of where asbestos goes, or the government who needs to crack down on the asbestos problem of Australia in general? What do you think - is it one, some, or all of them? Regardless, there should be a solution (or solutions) that all of the above are capable of rolling out quickly.Â
Going back to the current events, we’re told that a third party is testing for both friable and non-friable asbestos in the parks. If you’re not familiar with it, friable asbestos is more dangerous because it can easily be crushed into powder. Non-friable asbestos is dangerous but it’s harder to get the fibre airborne since it’s usually mixed with cement or resin. As a business working with removing asbestos, the reason why there’s asbestos found in mulch is simply that the waste was not handled properly and with the right treatment. It’s important to note that they are hiring a third party, because just looking at where the investigation is going there will be even more parks and schools that could contain asbestos.Â
Our team lead Ray has been interviewed by a radio station and has provided input on how this happened. If we’re making an educated guess, asbestos sheets and waste were mixed with other wood materials in wood chippers and were sold as mulch.
We hope that the testing goes on because there are over 400 parks in Sydney alone, and almost 900 in New South Wales. Who knows how long this testing, removal, and disposing will go on - let alone if it’ll be done correctly the second time.Â
It’s safe to say we’ll be avoiding parks that contain a lot of mulch and wood chips, even without the barricade, until this issue comes to a close.Â